by Teri Wilson
In his heart, though, he knew.
The only reason she would have left Dillon at home with a sitter was that she’d been inquiring about a divorce. Which meant the blame for her death rested at least partially on his weary shoulders. He tried not to think about it, especially once Dillon disappeared into his quiet, lonely world, but the truth was always there, lurking beneath the surface.
Not now, though. The touch of Amanda’s lips drew him gently and fully into the present. He felt complete again. Whole. No longer just a husk of the man he’d once been, but someone different and new. Someone who might not be destined to repeat the mistakes of his past. His previous life seemed far away—just a blip in his memory—and the hidden corner of his soul ordinarily reserved for remorse glimmered with something shiny and new.
Hope.
Amanda’s lips parted even more, and his tongue slid against hers. Slowly...reverently. Then she made a little whimpering sound, as delicate as a kitten, and he scooped the dog out of her arms and set him on the floor.
Let Tucker tear the house down. Ryan didn’t give a damn. For once, he wanted to stop worrying, stop thinking, stop trying to micromanage every second of his existence, as if he had any control over his life whatsoever. He just wanted to taste and feel and ache.
So he did. He ached so much that when Amanda lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck, he groaned and deepened their kiss as if she held the key to happiness somewhere in her glorious valentine of a mouth. Hell, maybe she did.
All night he’d been wondering about Dillon and the dog, trying to understand their connection. He kept turning it over in his mind, but his thoughts kept leading him back to the same place—her. Amanda.
She’d been there the night of the barbecue dinner, the best night he’d had with Dillon since moving to Spring Forest. She’d been there, holding his hand, when he’d gotten the most recent phone call from Dillon’s school. And she’d been there again when Dillon stumbled upon Tucker and Furever Paws. Somewhere deep down, Ryan was beginning to abandon the theory that it was all coincidence. There was something undeniably special about Amanda Sylvester.
“You,” he whispered, resting his forehead against hers and sliding his hands into her hair. It was the only syllable he could force out of his mouth when he wanted to say so much more. He wanted to ask her things, to dig for answers because the journalist in him couldn’t shake the need to know.
Who are you?
What are you doing to me...to us?
Is any of this real, or will it all slip away soon?
Her gaze bore into his, heated and drowsy with desire. What were they doing? Dillon was right down the hall, getting dressed for school. What would Ryan say if he walked into the kitchen and found him kissing a woman who wasn’t his mother? He’d waited a long time for his son to start talking again. He couldn’t risk ruining things now.
The beatific smile on Amanda’s face faded ever so slightly, as if she knew he’d started thinking again instead of letting his heart lead the way. Or worse—as if she thought they’d just made a terrible mistake.
But they hadn’t.
Had they?
“Um...” She raised a hand to her lips, touching them where his mouth had been just moments ago. “I shouldn’t have asked you to do that.”
Please, please kiss me.
Her words hung in the space between them. Ryan could still hear them, crystal clear, as if they’d been absorbed into the walls where they could haunt him day and night. Every time he closed his eyes.
“I’m sorry.” She took a backward step, just out of reach.
Ryan held out his hands anyway. He grasped at air and opened his mouth to tell her, No. Don’t be sorry. Don’t ever be sorry. But before he could say a thing, the iPhone sitting on the kitchen counter blared to life. His ringtone—the theme song to Dillon’s favorite cartoon—was in such jarring opposition to the private silence that had enveloped them just moments before that Ryan blinked, and wondered for a second if maybe he’d imagined the entire encounter.
But Amanda was right there, almost close enough to touch, with kiss-swollen lips and eyes that sparkled with intimacy. He wasn’t dreaming. She was real. The kiss had been real, and it had been the best damned kiss of his life.
The phone rang again, and she glanced at it. “Do you need to get that?”
“It can wait,” he said without checking the caller ID.
Why bother? Everyone in the world he cared most about was safe beneath this very roof. This wasn’t like the call he’d gotten a year ago...the one that had changed everything. Besides, he needed to make sure she knew he didn’t regret what had just happened.
But mere seconds after the ringing stopped, it started up again. This time, they both swiveled their heads in the direction of his phone, vibrating on the counter.
Finally, he looked down at the screen and took in the caller ID. “It’s my in-laws.” Of course. Ryan sighed and tried to tamp down the quick flare of panic spreading in his chest. He’d done nothing wrong. For crying out loud, he wasn’t even married anymore. He was free to kiss whomever he wanted. “My former in-laws, I mean.”
Amanda nodded, but didn’t seem convinced. Meanwhile, the phone kept blaring that awful sound.
“I’m sure it’s about Dillon. They tend to call and check on him a lot.” His jaw tightened. “If I don’t answer it, they’re going to keep at it.”
Or they might do what they’d done the last time he’d ignored their call. The night of the barbecue dinner, Annabelle had left a worried message on his voice mail and when he hadn’t immediately responded, she’d then followed it up with emails to both his personal and business accounts and several calls to the paper. Ryan couldn’t have them ringing The Spring Forest Chronicle and interrogating Jonah.
“Just wait.” He touched her wrist, wrapping his fingers loosely around it like a bracelet while he grabbed the phone with his other hand. “Please.”
“Take the call. It’s fine, I promise.” She nodded toward Tucker, trotting past them with the remains of Ryan’s running shoe dangling from his mouth. “I’ll make sure your dog is entertained.”
He nodded, released her wrist with no small amount of reluctance and pressed Accept on his phone’s small screen. “Hello?”
“There you are. We were beginning to worry.” Maggie’s mother huffed out a sigh.
“Dillon’s just fine, Annabelle. We both are.” Ryan stopped short of telling her it was good to hear from her, because he didn’t see the point in lying. Also, he didn’t want to encourage the daily interrogation.
Not that it would help. He’d moved six hours away in an effort to put a stop to their hovering, but Annabelle and Finch still hadn’t gotten the point.
“I called the other day and never heard anything back,” she said.
Not true. He’d returned her email, but now wasn’t the occasion to argue. “We’ve been busy. And actually, Dillon needs to be at school in less than an hour, so can we give you a call back this evening?”
Annabelle sniffed. “That won’t be necessary.” Relief flitted through Ryan for the briefest of moments, but before he could say anything else, she dropped a bomb into the middle of the conversation. “Finch and I are coming to visit.”
He sank into one of the kitchen chairs. “Annabelle, please.”
It wasn’t the right time. Dillon was just beginning to get settled. He needed a few more weeks. Was that really so much to expect?
“Surely you don’t expect us to ask permission to see our only grandchild.” She waited a beat, but not long enough for him to formulate any kind of reasonable response. “The lack of communication has been frustrating. We still can’t get a word out of Dillon, so we have no way of knowing what kind of environment he’s being raised in.”
His gaze cut to Amanda. He should have let the call roll to voice mail again. Thi
s definitely wasn’t the type of conversation he should be having in front of her mere moments after they’d had their first kiss.
Who was he kidding? It would probably be their only kiss.
She scooped Tucker into her arms and carried him out of the room.
Ryan lowered his voice. “That’s not fair, Annabelle. Dillon is happy here. He has a brand-new dog, and he’s started speaking again.”
“Excellent. Put him on the phone.”
And have her pressure Dillon into talking to her? He might clam up all over again. Ryan couldn’t—wouldn’t—take that risk. “The situation is still delicate. Why don’t we arrange a time to Skype later this evening after Dillon comes home from school?”
“That would be lovely, but we’re still coming. We’ve already purchased our plane tickets. We’ll see you at the end of the month.”
The line went dead before he could utter another protest.
Great. The end of the month was only three weeks away, which gave him less than twenty-one days to master both dog training and parenting before his former in-laws did something even more drastic than bombarding him with a surprise visit.
He could do this. Things were already improving, thanks to a scrappy little dog.
And Amanda.
Amanda. Damn it. Where had she gone?
He got up, left his phone behind and darted to the living room. But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere he looked, and when he spotted Tucker happily gnawing on a giant bone on his new plaid dog bed, Ryan understood why.
She’d kept her promise to make sure the dog was entertained.
And then she’d left.
Chapter Seven
“So let me get this straight.” Belle gave her apron strings a yank and tied them into a firm bow. “You kissed him, and then you ran.”
Why, oh why, had Amanda told her about the kiss?
“Shhh.” Amanda cast a pointed glance at Roberto, chopping carrots at the other end of the industrial kitchen and once again pretending he couldn’t hear what was happening around him. If Amanda ever became famous—or far more likely, infamous—that man would probably make a fortune penning her unauthorized tell-all biography.
But for now he didn’t appear to care. As far as she could tell, he’d also managed to keep a lid on all of the other embarrassing secrets he’d overheard, so when Belle rolled her eyes and gave zero indication of abandoning her line of questioning, Amanda relented.
“You know, when I mentioned it last night as we were locking up, I didn’t think we’d be revisiting it.” She waved her arms around. “Especially here.”
“Seriously? You thought you could just slip that into our parting conversation and I wouldn’t follow up? It’s like you don’t know me at all.” Belle crossed her arms. “Besides, where else would we discuss it? You’re always working.”
She had a point. “Fine, but you’ve got it all wrong. I didn’t run.”
She’d simply left without saying goodbye. It would’ve been weird to stay while Ryan had what was obviously an uncomfortable call with his late wife’s parents, wouldn’t it? He’d probably only asked her to wait to be polite since she’d made him breakfast like she was auditioning to be the next Betty Crocker. She could help him with Tucker’s training later when he wasn’t embroiled in family drama...and when she wasn’t weak in the knees from the best kiss she’d ever had. So she’d done the only sensible thing—she’d fled.
But she most definitely hadn’t run. At worst, she’d speed-walked.
“And I didn’t kiss him. It was the other way around.” She added a dash of cardamom to the batter in the silver bowl attached to her KitchenAid mixer. It was her secret ingredient. Why make plain old banana bread when you could make chai-spiced banana bread instead?
Belle pushed her next ingredient out of reach. “You know you want to talk about it. You always bake when you’re freaking out.”
Amanda couldn’t argue—not when she was surrounded by the evidence of the three pies and the batch of sweet potato biscuits she’d whipped up since 6:00 a.m. “Okay, yes. I’m freaking out. But only a little. And only because it’s been three whole days since he kissed me, and I haven’t heard a word from him.”
She shouldn’t have breathed a word about the kiss to Belle, but if she’d kept it bottled up inside for another day, she would have lost her mind. Even baking wasn’t helping.
“I repeat: he kissed you and you ran. You probably scared the poor guy to death,” Belle said.
Amanda’s face went warm. “Thanks, that makes me feel loads better. Good talk.”
Belle shrugged. “It’s a step up from vomiting, I’ll give you that.”
Roberto let out a snort.
“You’re both fired this time.” Amanda wagged a finger back and forth between them. “Right after the lunch rush.”
“Ignore her, Roberto. This is the tenth time I’ve been fired this month.” Belle cocked her head. “Now that I think about it, every time it’s been related somehow to Mr. Hotshot Newspaperman. Someone’s crush is getting out of hand.”
“It’s not a crush,” Amanda countered.
It was so much worse than that.
Seeing Ryan at home had reminded her what it had felt like growing up in a home bursting with family, and it made her feel oddly hollow inside. She’d always been too busy at the Grille to even think about marriage or kids. Plus that would have required her to flirt at some point and give dating an actual shot. She hadn’t even been able to make room in her life for Tucker, and it had never bothered her much because she had goals. But in reality, she was no closer to branching the restaurant into high-end catering today than she’d been a year ago. Not really.
She was going to be stuck running the same old incarnation of the Main Street Grille for the rest of her life.
Alone.
She could see herself, plain as day, making loaf after loaf of banana bread in the same boring kitchen until she fell over dead. And something about that tire swing in Ryan’s backyard, coupled with the way Tucker looked so content in the crook of Ryan’s arm, had made her go a little crazy. It made her want things she hadn’t thought she’d wanted at all. Otherwise, she never would have asked him to kiss her. Never in a million years.
But she had. And for those few minutes when his hands were in her hair and his mouth moved against hers, she’d forgotten all about the Grille. It could have burned to the ground right then and she wouldn’t have noticed. The instant his lips had touched hers, she’d begun to want more. More life. More experiences that made her weak in the knees.
More everything.
And it scared her senseless.
“Whatever. I think you should talk to him. Didn’t you promise to help him with Tucker?” Belle shook her head. “That dog is probably running circles around him.”
Amanda glared at her. Belle was homing in on her weak spot. Poor Tucker had already been adopted twice, and neither home had worked out. If anything or anyone could make her swallow her pride and face Ryan again, it was that squatty little grump of a dog.
“Point taken. I’ll drop by Ryan’s house and check on Tucker after Dillon gets out of school this afternoon.” Maybe if Dillon was nearby, she could manage to look Ryan in the eye without begging him to kiss her again. Then again, that hadn’t stopped her before, had it?
“Or you could head over to The Spring Forest Chronicle and bring him some coffee. I heard he’s been going to Whole Bean, and you know our coffee is better than theirs is.” Belle smirked.
She was baiting her, and Amanda knew it. Since the day Whole Bean opened, Amanda insisted the Grille still had the best coffee in town, their notable lack of fancy espresso machines and moody baristas notwithstanding. Ryan deserved better.
And she had promised to help with Tucker.
Also, the odds of accidentally kissing him again would
be even slimmer in his newsroom.
“I’ll think about it, but first I’ve got to get this banana bread in the oven.” And then maybe hide until all her employees forgot she’d kissed Ryan Carter.
“Whatever you say.” Belle pushed through the swinging door toward the dining room, then poked her head back in to add, “But just so you know, I heard the Whole Bean uses commercial milk for their lattes instead of the fancy farm-to-table stuff you insist on buying. Ryan is always trying to order those here, so he’s probably over there guzzling factory milk at this very moment.”
Now she was playing dirty.
Amanda finished mixing her banana bread batter, divided it into three loaf pans and tossed them in the oven, all the while imagining Ryan drinking coffee that had probably been roasted in ten-ton batches somewhere up north, flavored with milk from poor, pitiful cows that lived on a factory farm instead of real Carolina cattle that grazed in the lush green valleys that bordered the Blue Ridge Mountains. Sometimes Amanda even served milk from Birdie and Bunny’s sweet dairy cow.
The man clearly had no idea what he was missing.
She untied her apron and threw it on the counter in a lump. “I’ll be right back.”
Without glancing up from his chopping, Roberto said, “No rush. I’ll take the banana bread out when the timer goes off if you get stuck at the Chronicle preaching about the virtues of farm-to-table cuisine.”
“Thank you.” Amanda nodded. She didn’t love the fact that her line cook assumed she was heading to Ryan’s office, but at least he’d been kind enough not to mention the kissing.
And the fleeing.
Belle would have surely brought it up again, but she was too busy waiting tables to notice Amanda pouring a cup of coffee and topping it off with a generous dollop of steamed milk. Maybe she could actually sneak out for a minute unnoticed. Only a minute—just long enough to deliver the coffee, ask Ryan how things were going with Tucker and smooth things over after her awkward exit from his home the other day. She honestly didn’t have time for anything else. The barbecue fundraiser was next weekend and while most of the plans were under control, she still needed to round up a prominent member of the community to judge the cook-off portion of the festival. The trouble was that she’d managed to convince so many local businesses to set up booths at the fundraiser that she hardly knew anyone else she could ask to pitch in.
